The Letters
by oh-mai-word
Summary: Tumblr prompt from @1curioussoul. Timothy snoops around his parents' bedroom and finds the letters that Patrick wrote Shelagh when she was in the Sanitorium.
"Timothy?"

As he approached her, he saw her hands rise and knew immediately that he was about to receive an order. Of all the things that they had learned about each other over the years their respective preferred form of body language was the aspect that stood out. Shelagh could always tell how Timothy felt by his eyes. When he was excited, his eyes made constant contact with whomever he spoke to. When he was distressed, his eyes followed his feet and eye contact was scarce and carefully avoided. When he was irritated, they rolled so much they might as well have been bowling balls. In any regular conversation, they flitted about, carefree. Now, though, as Shelagh called him into the living room, they adopted rapt attention, as her serious tone advised.

Shelagh's modes of self-expression were most often very subdued. Therefore, everything she did that was explicit was extremely important. Timothy learned to be aware of these actions and grew to understand them as if they were his own. She never wasted his time, so if she called him, he know that there must be a just cause. By the raising of her hands, he also knew that she needed him to do something. He stifled his reflexive groan. After all, he had just finished his brand new book, Freud's _Beyond the Pleasure Principle_ , and he decided to let his superego override his id and do whatever his mum asked. His mum. Thinking of her as his mum truly never became old.

"Timothy, I have to run to pick up Angela from Nonnatus. She seems to have hurt herself. They called and I need to be there."  
"Sure. Is there anything I can do?"  
"Yes, as a matter of fact. On the bed, there are a few forms that need to be arranged into a file. I need you to arrange them, there is only one to be done."

He nodded and began to make his way towards the stairs and Shelagh rushed outside to the rescue of her daughter.

* * *

Twenty-five sheets of paper. All out of order. What. A. Headache.

After about 10 minutes of attempting to decipher his father's horrible penmanship, Timothy decided to look for a magnifying glass to facilitate the organizing of the last few pages of notes that needed to be sorted. He decided to search in his mum's bedside shelf. He opened the first box he saw and immediately, he spied the magnifying glass. Success!

After a mere 3 or 4 minutes, he was finished, only missing a paperclip to finish off the file. Logically, he decided to search the same box.

Lifting up the box out of its designated area, he placed it on the bed and opened it for a second time. He moved the various items around the box in search of a paperclip and discovered a few letters, carefully placed under the new stationary.

The paper seemed to be aged a bit, a yellow tinge beginning to appear. His very own address was scrawled on the back. Now this, this interested him quite a bit, to say the least. He turned over the letter. Sister Bernadette? He had not though about his mum's past occupation in a very long time.

"Maybe I shouldn't read this," he questioned himself aloud.

But curiosity took over.

"Dear Sister,"

It was legible. That's a good start.

But what followed:

Awkwardness, shyness, an assertion of care.

The first letter led to the next.

Comfort, friendship, yearning, and assertion of devotion (whether friendly or romantic, unsure).

And the next to the third, and so on.

Until the final letter, where all restraint was left to dissipate.

Blatant expression of romantic emotions.

Timothy was nothing less and most likely more than shocked.

He saw the way that they looked at each other.

It made him quite uncomfortable, but he knew that _that_ is what he would like to have someday.

But they rarely explicated their feeling towards each other. They seemed to have a language that was much more explicit than words could ever be.

After reading the letters, Timothy was not the least bit surprised that his Mum had married his Dad. If Tim wasn't his father's son, he was sure the letters would have swayed his emotions too.

"Timothy, have you finished?"

He practically jumped. He scrambled to find the paperclip and return the box to its place. Just as Shelagh was about to enter the room, Tim was sitting peacefully, putting the paperclip on the file and placing it in her free hand.

"All done, Mum."

"Thank you, Tim. You are very helpful. I'm sure you will discover some compensation." She winked.

Chocolate and book money, he hoped. That is all that he ever wanted.

"Is Angela alright?" He patted his sister's back.

"'twas only a scrape. She saw Sister Monica Joan with some cake and ran away from Trixie to go to her. She fell in the process. I have never seen such a fuss over such small damage to the epidermis."

They chuckled. He felt lucky. She thought he was being suspiciously jolly. She rationalized it by assuming it was the promise of book money.

He never told them about his small escapade, but he always observed them, and could see that his father's love was only one side of the story. Hers had a fierceness that was best shown in action, not on paper.


End file.
